The subject matter disclosed herein relates to the manufacture of airfoil components, including those used in aircraft and power generation applications. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a system and method for the manufacture of airfoil components.
Some aircraft and/or power plant systems, for example certain jet aircraft, nuclear, simple cycle and combined cycle power plant systems, wind turbines employ turbines in their design and operation. Some of these turbines include one or more stages of buckets which are exposed to fluid flows during operation. Each bucket can include a base supporting a respective airfoil, such as a turbine blade, configured to aerodynamically interact with and extract work from fluid flow (e.g., creating thrust, driving machinery, converting thermal energy to mechanical energy, etc.) as part of, for example, power generation. As a result of this interaction and conversion, the geometry of these airfoil components can affect system and turbine operation, performance, thrust, efficiency, and power. Geometrical design considerations also affect the performance of airfoils and similar components in other contexts.
Manufacturing airfoils and other components can be more costly and time-consuming where the airfoil is large and includes a complex or “composite geometry.” As described herein, a “composite” geometry refers to a continuous shape composed of several sub-sections, each of which may have a simple shape (e.g., straight line, arc, etc.) and large sizes. In a conventional process, different sub-sections of the airfoil may be molded and manufactured separately before being bonded together to form a composite geometry. Other conventional techniques may also include forming airfoil components by shaping individual metal laminations and then combining them into the desired shape.